Inside the NBA's New Style Wars

For many of these guys, that's the biggest barrier: Not one designer in the industry—not one—is thinking six feet nine, 235, with a plus wingspan when determining next season's look. Another is functionality: NBA players sweat for a living. They're most comfortable in workout clothes, because that's where they live. Until last season, Durant was that guy. Then he was approached after a game by Regi Puckett, an enterprising stylist in Chicago, who told him he could push his look beyond the schoolboy knapsack-with-the-safety-strap gimmick he made famous during the previous year's playoffs. Now Durant can screen-grab a picture of a peacoat or a pair of slacks that he sees in a magazine or a blog and send it to Puckett, who will get the piece constructed to Durantula proportions.

Westbrook, on the other hand, is normal-human-sized (he's six feet three) and can buy straight off the rack. He's loved shopping since his mother brought him to downtown L.A.'s fashion alley as a little kid. Now, he says, "if I get bored after working out, I'll find some shops and go check it out and see if they have some new stuff. See what's good. I go to Barneys; I go to Gucci, Louis, YSL. I go everywhere—Rodeo Drive, Vivienne Westwood, Marc Jacobs, Joyrich. I'm all around."

He's found friends within the haute couture scene, tagging along with Vogue's André Leon Talley during New York's Fashion Week last fall. "ALT's not really into sports," he says, "but we were able to conversate about the history of fashion, and I was able to get his perspective on the shows and how the fabrics and the clothes fit on the different girls and guys." Westbrook is especially proud that, unlike his peers around the league, he's never hired a stylist. So proud, in fact, that he's hired a publicist to trumpet the fact that he's never hired a stylist. "I know people at stores that will hold stuff for me. I know people that can get me clothes," he says. "But it's not like I have somebody that comes to pick out my outfits."

The surest sign that Westbrook has crossed over as a style icon is the venom he inspires. When I ask Puckett who the most stylish man in the NBA is, he insinuates that it's Kevin and takes a playful jab at Russ in the process. "I'll say he shares a locker room with the guy that has the most people talking about what he's wearing."

Durant immediately defuses style-rivalry talk. "When I look in the mirror and I feel good about myself, that's the only person I'm trying to impress." Later, when I talk to Westbrook, he doesn't rise to the bait, either, but it's clear where he rates in his own mind. I tell him Durant admitted to me that he tunes up his look when he's in a big city like Los Angeles. Does RW also try a little harder in his hometown?

"Nah," he says, dismissively. "I dress up everywhere."

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Time-wave zero for the modern era of NBA style is 2005, when the league adopted its new dress code. Vague enough in its language—dress slacks or dress jeans, dress shoes or dress boots; collared shirt on the way into the locker room; no chains, pendants, or medallions worn over clothes; no hats, etc.—it was strictly enforced upon introduction. You may recall some controversy. There were cries of racism, complaints that the league was cracking down on hip-hop fashions in deference to squirrelly corporate sponsors. The architect of the code, NBA commissioner David Stern, has always dismissed that idea. "Our guys were photographed coming into buildings looking like they were going to a day at the beach," he explained to me.

What no one disputes, Stern included, is that a cottage industry bloomed in the code's wake. At this moment in 2013, the NBA's fashion axis stretches from Waraire Boswell, a six-foot-seven bespoke tailor with a showroom in downtown Los Angeles (his clients for suits and separates include Blake Griffin, Chris Bosh, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler), to Laure Heriard Dubreuil, a well-connected French owner of a 20,000-square-foot multi-luxury-brand boutique in Miami Beach called The Webster, to the woman who has elevated the league's sartorial game higher than anybody else, the Harlem-based stylist Rachel Johnson, a former Essenceassistant who went on to do video shoots for Jay-Z and N.E.R.D. before landing big-name NBA clients like LeBron James.

This network cajoles American and European designers into expanding the top end of their size runs—Dubreuil has successfully lobbied Givenchy to offer menswear sizes up to 62—and ensures that the players get dibs on items from seasonal lines. (Just before New York's spring Fashion Week, I accompanied Johnson on a mission to Calvin Klein's midtown showroom to pull oxblood blazers for Stoudemire; STAT's measurements are then sent to Milan, where the jackets are sewn to his size). Johnson claims the stylists have convinced the fashion houses that an NBA player can help "masculinize" their clothes. "Anybody with any insight understands a ‘real guy' looks to an athlete before he looks to a waify model," she says, "or even an actor."

Stern freely admits he never saw this coming, and then goes on to imply that he kinda saw this coming. Right after the code was instituted, "a lot of players would whisper to me, I don't know what the fuss is about. Let's go! There was a sense that this allowed players to express their sense of style. Our players, individually, took it as a catalyst to show themselves off. And suddenly the response from the public was so overwhelmingly positive that, you know, it's getting to be like the red carpet at the Grammys. Who's dressing you tonight? Armani. Now they are among the best-looking, best-shaped models in the world."

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When I first hook up with the Miami Heat, we're in the visiting locker room at the Oracle in Oakland, where they've just knocked off the Golden State Warriors. LeBron scored the 20,000th point of his career tonight, making him the youngest ever to reach this milestone, and the media scrum around his locker has hardened into a callus. Across the room from Bron, Chris Bosh is in one corner, already dressed in a light fern, unbelievably slim custom Waraire Boswell suit and a "CB" tie bar, with a hardcover of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken visible from his unzipped black Parabellum bag. Dwyane Wade is pulling on a pair of electric-blue Scotch & Soda trousers, which he hikes up to showcase his multicolored hosiery as he hollers, "You need to raise your sock game," in Ray Allen's direction.